193 



CLOTAIRE I. 



CLOWES, WILLIAM. 



294 



General, attended all the clubs, exceeded in his ravings the moat furious 

 demagogues, and was elected a member of the Convention in September 

 1792. He voted for the king's death, adding, " I likewise pass sentence 

 on Frederick William, king of Prussia." A few weak-minded men 

 yielded to his rhapsodies, and this enthusiast was beginning to form a 

 party when Robespierre, feeling uneasy, denounced the ' Orator of the 

 Human Race,' aa the baron styled himself, and sent him to the same 

 scaffold as Hebert, on March 24, 1794. He requested that he might 

 be executed the last, " that he might establish one or two more 

 principles whilst his companions' heads were falling." (Rabbe ; Biogr. 

 dei Contempor.) 



CLOTAIRE I., the youngest son of Clovis, the conqueror of the 

 Gauls, and of his wife Clotilda. Clovis having divided his territories 

 at his death in 511 among his four sons, Clotaire became king of 

 Soissons. He joined his brothers in their war against the Burgundians, 

 which ended in the defeat of the Burgundians, and the extinction of 

 the first kingdom of Burgundy, which was divided among the brother 

 kings of the Franks. Clotaire and his brother Childebert, king of 

 Paris, invaded the kingdom of Orleans after the death of their brother 

 Chlodomere, and murdered two of his sons. The third, named Chlo- 

 dovalde, concealed himself in a hermitage near Paris, where the village 

 of St. Cloud has since risen. After the death of his nephew Theodebert, 

 king of Austrasia, Clotaire took possession of that kingdom also ; and 

 after the death of Childebert, Clotaire united in his person the whole 

 monarchy of the Franks in 553. His natural son, Chranme, having 

 revolted against him, joined the Count of Brittany, who maintained 

 bis independence against the kings of the Franks. Clotaire defeated 

 his son, and burnt him alive with bis family in a hut in which he had 

 taken shelter, in 560. In 562 Clotaire died, and was buried in the 

 church of St. Medard of Soissons. He left four sons, among whom, 

 following the example of his father, he divided the monarchy of the 

 Franks. Caribert was made king of Paris, Gontran king of Orleans 

 and Burgundy, Siegbert king of Met/ or Austrasia, and Chilperic king 

 of SoisBons. 



CLOTAIRE II. was the son of Chilperic, king of Soissons, or of 

 Neustria, and of his wife Fredegonda. His father died, and left him 

 an infant, under the regency of his mother. After many cruel wars, 

 occasioned by the rivalships between Fredegonda and Brunehaut, the 

 wife of Siegbert, king of Austrasia, Clotaire united in his person the 

 whole empire of the Franks, as his grandfather Clotaire I. had done 

 before him, in 613. Having taken Brunehaut prisoner, he put her to 

 a cruel death. Clotaire, in order to conciliate his new subjects of the 

 kingdoms of Burgundy and Austrasia, appointed a Maire du Palais, 

 Major Domus KegUe, to each for life. The office previously seems to 

 have been held, as well as in Neustria, during pleasure only. The 

 Maires of Austrasia, in the following reigns, became by degrees inde- 

 pendent of the sovereign, and at last usurped the supreme power. At 

 the council of Paris in 615 Clotaire issued general ordinances, which 

 were called ' Capitularia.' He also convoked at times a kind of 

 temporary parliament, which was an assembly of the chief officers of 

 the Franks. Clotaire had to sustain a war in his German dominions 

 beyond the Rhine against the Saxons, whom he defeated with the loss 

 of their king in 626. In 628 Clotaire died, aged forty-five years, and 

 was buried at Paris in the church of St. Germain-des-Prez. Clotaire IL 

 was a man of abilities and of considerable information for his time : 

 he was brave and popular, but ambitious, unprincipled, and cruel, like 

 most of the Merovingian kings. 



CLOTILDE, MARGUERITE ELEONORE, born at Vallon Chalis 

 in the VivaraU, on the banks of the Ardeche, about 1405, married 

 B^renger de Surville, who soon after joined the army of the dauphin, 

 afterwards Charles VII., and was killed at the siege of Orleans. 

 During his absence Clotilde is said to have composed and addressed to 

 him her first epistle, which she called ' He'roide,' in imitation of Ovid's 

 compositions of the same name. Her other poems she is said to have 

 composed during her long widowhood. They consist chiefly of ballads, 

 rondeaux, chansons, epistles, with fragments of an epic poem. The 

 last in date is a chant-royal, on the occasion of the battle of Fornovo, 

 gained by Charles VIII. But the authenticity of these compositions 

 is very much doubted. It rests merely on the reported assertion of 

 Joseph Etienne de Surville, a descendant of Be>enger, and an officer 

 in the royal army, who emigrated at the time of the French revolution, 

 but who, having re-entered France in 1798, was tried and executed. 

 He is raid to have discovered Clotilde's autograph manuscripts among 

 the family papers, which however were all destroyed at the time when 

 the peasantry went about burning the mansions of the nobility. He 

 entrusted some friends with a copy of the poems, which were first 

 published by Vanderbourg in 1803, with a biography of Clotilde. For 

 the controversy about their authenticity see ' Biographic Universelle,' 

 article ' Surville ' (Clotilde), and the authorities referred to ; among 

 other*, Raynouard's article in the 'Journal des Savans,' July, 1824. 

 The poems are not without merit ; and if not written by Clotilde they 

 are a very clever imitation of the old French stylo of the 15th century, 

 although some of the image* and expressions appear to betray a later 

 origin. Clotilde is said to have died at a very advanced age. 



'VIS, CLODOVEUS, and CHLODW1G in old German, whence 

 Ludwig, the Latinised form Ludovicus, and Louis are derived, was 

 born A.D. 467. He was the son of Chuderic, the grandson of Mero 

 wig, who gave his name to the Merovingian dynasty. Tournay was 



then the capital of the Saliau Franks, who had occupied the north-east 

 part of Gaul, and extended their incursions as far as Paris. After the 

 death of ChUderic in 481, Clovis attacked Siagrius, the Roman com- 

 mander, defeated him near Soissons, took him prisoner, and beheaded 

 him. Having conquered the whole country, south and west, as far as 

 the Seine, he fixed his residence at Soissons. He afterwards got rid, 

 by force or treachery, of the other Prankish chiefs, his own relatives, 

 who held various parts of North Gaul: Siegbert, king of Cologne, 

 Cararic, king of the Morini, Ranacarius, king of Cambrai, and others, 

 all perished by his hand. 



In 493 Clovis married Clotilda, the daughter of Childeric, king of 

 the Burgundians, who was a Christian. Clovis and most of the Franks 

 were still Pagans. In 496 Clovis fought a great battle at Tolbiac, near 

 Cologne, against the Alemanni, who had advanced to the Rhine and 

 threatened Gaul. In the moat critical moment of the fight, it is said 

 that he made a vow to acknowledge the God of Clotilda if he remained 

 conqueror. The Alemanni were completely defeated, and Clovis and 

 most of his soldiers were christened on Christmas day of the same 

 year, by Item!, archbishop of Kheims. The Gauls and Romans of 

 the western provinces, aa far as the mouth of the Loire, submitted 

 voluntarily to Clovis. 



He next turned his arms against Alaric II., king of the Visigoths, in 

 the south-west part of Gaul, whom he defeated in the battle of Vouilli, 

 near Poictiers, in 507 ; Alaric fell, and Clovis took possession of the 

 whole country as far as the Pyrenees. Theodoric, king of the Goths 

 in Italy, coming to the assistance of his countrymen, defeated Clovis 

 near Aries, in 509, after which peace was made between the Gotha and 

 the Franks. Anastasius I., emperor of Constantinople, bestowed upon 

 Clovis the titles of Patrician and Augustus, and in 510 sent him a 

 crown of gold and a mantle of purple. Clovis now fixed his residence 

 at Paris. In 511, at the Council of Orldans, the rights called Regalia, 

 by which on every vacancy of a see, the revenues devolved on the kiug, 

 who had the right of nomination, were acknowledged by the bishops 

 as vested in the kings of the Franks. Clovis caused the laws and 

 customs of the Salian Franks to be compiled and arranged to serve as 

 a code for his Prankish subjects. His Gaulish and Roman subjects 

 were subject to the Theodosian Code. In 511 Clovis died at Paris, 

 after a reign of thirty years, and was buried in the church of St. Peter 

 and Paul, afterwards called Sainte Genevieve. When the old church 

 of Salute Genevieve was pulled down on May 10, 1807, two sarcophagi 

 of stone were found with the remains of Clovis and his wife Clotilda, 

 as well as an epitaph upon the former, written long after his death. 

 They are preserved in the ' Muse"e des Monumens Fra^ais,' as well as 

 a statue of Clovis, erected to his memory by King Robert, towards the 

 beginning of the llth century. Clovis left four sons, among whom he 

 divided his monarchy. [CLOTAIRE 1.] Clovis first reduced the Franks 

 to the condition of a united and partly civilised nation. His conversion 

 to Christianity conciliated the clergy as well as his Roman and Gaulish 

 subjects, most of whom had embraced that faith. 



CLOWES, WILLIAM, printer, was born at Chichester, January 1, 

 1779 ; died January 26, 1847. The father of Mr. Clowes was educated 

 at Oxford, and kept a large school at Chichester ; but he died when 

 the subject of this notice was an infant, leaving his widow to support 

 two children with straitened means. She was enabled, by keeping a 

 small school, to give her son a business education ; and he was appren- 

 ticed to Mr. Seagrave, a printer at Chichester. He came to London iu 

 1802, and worked as a compositor with Mr. Teape, of Tower Hill. Iu 

 1803 he commenced business on his own account iu Villiers-street, 

 Strand, on a capital of 3502. He purchased one press; engaged one 

 assistant ; and, after working as a compositor through the day, would 

 often, for two or three consecutive nights, toil at press, to have his 

 small stock of type free for the next day's demand. It was this energy 

 of character that raised Mr. Clowes to his subsequent eminence. 

 Fortune favoured his exertions. He married, when he was at the age 

 of twenty-four, a cousin of Mr. Winchester, a stationer, who had much 

 government business ; and by him he was recommended for important 

 official work. His punctual industry and obliging and kindly disposi- 

 tion brought friends around him ; and in a few years the humble 

 beginner with one press had a considerable printing-office in Northum- 

 berland Court. This office was burnt down ; but a larger rose in its 

 place. In 1823 he commenced steam-printing. He had two or three 

 machines in a dark cellar; and, the process being novel, his office had 

 mauy visitors of literary reputation. Mr. Clowes was always a signal 

 example of the honest ardour of manufacturing enterprise to lead tho 

 way under new circumstances. He saw that newspapers were printed 

 by steam ; and he estimated the possibility that books might be 

 demanded in sufficiently large numbers to make the new invention of 

 more universal application than was at first considered probable. An 

 action brought by the Duke of Northumberland, whose palace was 

 close to Mr. Clowes's printing-office, to abate the steam-press as a 

 nuisance, was successfully defended; but the printer removed his 

 ii"i , and his dirt, under the award of arbitrators ; and the decision 

 was a fortunate one for him. In 1826 he became the occupier of tho 

 spacious and well-known premises iu Duke-street, Stamford-street. In 

 the course of years the humble establishment of the young Sussex 

 compositor grew into 24 steam-presses and 28 hand-presses, giving 

 employ to 600 persons, in the largest, most complete, and well-organised 

 printing manufactory that had ever existed in the world. The creation 



